Higher education and women’s empowerment in Pakistan

This paper summarises the findings of a 2005 doctoral study by Malik which explored to what extent participation in higher education offers empowerment to women in Pakistan. A survey instrument was used to question female faculty members and female students from 10 public universities in Pakistan; 1290 students and 290 faculty members responded. Subsequently, semi‐structured interviews were held with 10 faculty members and 10 students. Respondents highlighted economic independence and an increased standing within family and society as the main benefits of higher education participation. A major finding is that participation in higher education enables women to impact on a number of discriminatory practices simultaneously and thereby effect change for the better. The main recommendation is that future educational strategies be developed with the aim of further promoting gender equality in all areas of education in Pakistan, but particularly with the aim of increasing female students’ participation in higher education.     

Opening the black box: user-log analyses of children’s e-Book reading and associations with word knowledge

Reading and Writing - Third to fifth graders read an interactive choose-your-own adventure e-Book. User logs recorded their reading behaviors and were used to investigate students’...     

Encountering education in the rural: migrant women’s perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper explores migrant women’s encounters with formal and informal education in what can be termed new immigration rural destinations. We ask to what extent educational opportunities are realized in these new destinations. We show that education aspirations may be jeopardized because of the desire to achieve economic goals and thus require remedial action. Specifically, we refer to qualitative data collected in rural (and remote) Boddington in Western Australia, and rural Armagh in Northern Ireland. The paper engages with two interrelated dimensions of this migrant/migration experience. English is not a first language for our participants and we first examine the provision and consumption of informal English Language classes. In doing so, we demonstrate the complex social and cultural dimensions of community-based English language instruction. Second, we attend to migrant mothers’ perceptions of and responses to children’s formal education. We highlight transnational senses of, and tensions around, ‘local/rural’ pedagogies and resultant migrant strategies.     

Opening up the black box: Teacher competence,instructional quality,and students’ learning progress

Existing research indicates inconsistent or at best weak predictive effects of teacher knowledge on student achievement. Data from Germany were used to examine the relation between teachers' content and pedagogical content knowledge, their perception, interpretation, and decision-making skills, the instructional quality implemented in class, and students' learning progression in mathematics. Rather than direct effects of teacher knowledge on students, we hypothesized an effect chain with multiple mediation processes while controlling for school type and student background. Multi-level modeling with 3496 students from 154 classrooms revealed a mediating role of teachers' skills and their instructional quality for the relation between teacher knowledge and students' learning progress. Effect sizes were medium to strong, and the model explained a large amount of variance. No direct effects of teachers’ knowledge on student progress were found. We discuss our findings with respect to the teacher-competence-as-a-continuum model and with respect to future research.     

Negotiating for change: women’s movements and education reform in Taiwan

The dramatic changes during the past 20 years in Taiwan offer a good example of how gender policy in education is facilitated by a combination of interrelated economic, political and social forces. Taiwan’s policy on gender education emerged from the interaction of state, education, academic and non‐academic feminist positions in reforms. This paper demonstrates – first, the importance of the socio‐political contexts in which reform was proposed, and second, the actions of feminists in making best use of the opportunities thrown up by a confluence of social factors. The social, economic and political transformations of the 1980s saw the rise of a ‘new’ state both supposedly and in reality more responsive to the needs of non‐profit organisations. In testing out relationships of partnership with the state, feminist activists saw the deregulation of education as an opportunity to get women’s issues on the agenda. These reforms were catalysed by a series of social events bringing together supporters in a mood of celebration, protest or mourning specifically in response to particular events. The struggles, contentions, and negotiations that underlay the eventual approval of gender reform in education are illustrated.     

Children’s education rights at the transition to secondary education: School choice in Northern Ireland

The principles of school choice and diverse provision underpin transition to secondary education in a majority of countries. This article focuses on the potential for structural diversity to constrain rather than promote choice. Although intended to improve equity in access and quality of provision, choice-based systems serve to homogenise school intakes and magnify attainment differences between schools. School choice decisions become high-stakes in such contexts, because eventual school placements influence the future character of children’s schooling. In Northern Ireland, existing community divisions are reflected in the available school types, with a majority of places at either Catholic or de facto Protestant schools, and only a small number at Integrated schools. This results in high levels of homogenisation along community lines. In addition, the provision of separate grammar and non-grammar schools means that intakes are also academically stratified, resulting in the extreme between-school attainment differences characteristic of systems arranged in this way. Drawing on documentary evidence and a survey of transition-age children, this research discusses how school choice within structurally complex systems can be constrained. The main focus is on how children’s education rights, as set down in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are placed at risk by the interaction of system-level divisions. It concludes that school choice arrangements in Northern Ireland do not operate in compliance with children’s education rights when tested against each of the requirements set out in Tomasevski’s 4-As scheme, namely that education provision must be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable.     

Self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of innovative and traditional learning environments: a longitudinal study in secondary education

This study investigated the relationship between the development of students’ self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of the learning environment in terms of autonomy support, the emphasis on relevance and collaborative learning. In addition, we compared innovative learning environments that aim to enhance self-regulated learning with traditional learning environments. Questionnaires for measuring self-regulated learning and perceptions of the learning environment were administered by 648 students. Self-regulated learning was measured at the start of secondary education and again half way through the first year. The results point to the importance of how students perceive the learning environment for self-regulated learning. There was a positive relationship between autonomy support and relevance and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, students in innovative environments perceived more autonomy support, more emphasis on relevance and more collaborative learning than those in traditional environments. Students in innovative environments, however, reported no more self-regulated learning than students in traditional environments.     

Gender complexities in Jamaican secondary education: class culture and the ‘elephant’ in the room

ABSTRACT

This article utilizes a combination of the masculinity and intersectionality frameworks to argue that the underachievement of boys occurs in the intricacies of patriarchy, region (rural area), and class culture. The article utilizes data drawn from a qualitative study at two rural institutions in the parish of Manchester, Jamaica, to critically analyze the gendered nexus between boys’ underachievement and educational policies. The low grades merited by boys raise questions of patriarchy in the educational system in which they and their female teachers operate. While the failure of boys is not generalizable to the entire population, underachievement is also located in the mismatch between curriculum and the culture of these boys.     

Inside the ‘body box’: exploring feedback in higher education

In recent years, educational research has paid special attention to teachers’ practical-operative experience. The growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has become a turning point in sociological, anthropological and educational studies. The present study aims to explore lecturers’ perceptions and conceptions of feedback and their daily professional practice, with a focus on the use of body movement while providing feedback during the class. Even though educational research has paid a lot of attention to the concepts of practice and performance, there are very few studies that consider the main actor included in the definition of those concepts: the body. Methodologically this exploratory case study uses a mixed methods approach. Results identified two types of issues: the first one concerns the relation between lecturer and students during the feedback practice; the second one concerns the internal coherence of lecturers between the kind of verbal feedback they provide during the lesson and how at the same time they act bodily.     

Context and the gendered status of teachers: women’s empowerment through leadership of non‐formal schooling in rural Bangladesh

Empowering women to control and change their lives continues to be an important goal for many nations. This article examines the empowering effects of being selected and trained to lead rural schools in Bangladesh, using survey and interview data from 152 village women working with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee education programme. The adoption by women of the traditional male roles of teacher and educational leader combined with a commitment to serving the poor have led to the widespread acceptance and normalisation of non‐traditional roles for women in conservative village culture. The study confirms the need for a holistic approach and context sensitivity when designing change initiatives to empower women and promote gender equity.     

Reflections on the ‘site of struggle’: girls' experience of secondary education in the late 1950s

Brian Simon’s Studies in the History of Education, 1780–1870, published in 1960, set out to counter nearly all work previously produced on the history of education in Britain in this period, and to direct the field towards a new course. It provided a Marxist perspective that drew upon Simon’s involvement in campaigns for educational reform over the previous decade. It also reflected the character of the Cold War in the academy in Britain at this time. Overall, it produced a form of people’s history that was shaped by politics and ideology and informed by Simon’s leading position in the British Communist Party. His work in this period marks him out as a highly significant Marxist historian, as well as one of the leading Marxist educators of his generation.     

‘Decidedly Different’: lesbian women and education

ABSTRACT

Lesbian women's experiences of education frequently occurs within a contradictory public relationship: their identity ‘woman’ is usually ‘visible’ whilst their identity ‘lesbian’ remains generally ‘invisible’ ‐ both in educational settings and within wider educational discourses. By drawing upon examples of self‐understanding of lesbian identity this paper discusses the meanings and connections between these two identities from the perspectives of lesbian women themselves. The inclusion of self‐understanding of lesbian identity as a central feature in exploring the relationship of lesbian women and education permits a discussion of both lesbian oppression and lesbian agency. I will discuss this with reference to my recent study of lesbian women and education. The inclusion of self‐understanding of lesbian identity illuminates the complex relationships which exist between individual identity meanings and those which are socially constructed and maintained within an educational system based upon the ideology of heterosexism.     

Learning in and from the West: international students and international women’s organisations in the interwar period

This article explores the importance of higher education to international women’s organisations such as the International Federation of University Women, the International Council of Women, the International Alliance of Women and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and asks how studying abroad contributed to the international cooperation and understanding promoted by these organisations in the interwar period. In particular, it assesses how the movement of ‘Eastern’ women, especially East Asian, to the West for educational purposes at the beginning of the twentieth century benefited the expansion of these organisations beyond Europe, North America and white settler countries such as Australia and New Zealand between the world wars, and to what extent the experiences of international students in the ‘West’ influenced their political activities back home and their involvement in international women’s organisations.     

Roles of women’s higher education institutions in international contexts

Women??s colleges and universities persist around the world, even as the vast majority of tertiary institutions are open to men and women. In nearly every nation, women can attend even the most elite formerly all-male universities, and in several nations women are the majority of all college students. Questions therefore arise about the continued need for a single-sex sector in the 21st century. In this study I examined the contribution of these institutions to their national systems of education and society. I used a qualitative, comparative, multiple case study approach to understand 14 diverse women??s colleges and universities in nine nations on five continents. Five key roles emerged: access, campus climate, gender empowerment, leadership development, and cultural paradox. I make recommendations for research and practice.     

Open the ‘black box’ creativity and innovation: a study of activities in R&D departments. Some prospects for engineering education

Innovation is a key component to the success and longevity of companies. Our research opens the ‘black box’ of creativity and innovation in R&D teams. We argue that understanding the nature of R&D projects in terms of creativity/innovation, efficiency/inefficiency, is important for designing education policies and improving engineering curriculum. Our research addresses the inventive design process, a lesser known aspect of the innovation process, in 197 R&D departments of industrial sector companies in France. One fundamental issue facing companies is to evaluate processes and results of innovation. Results show that the evaluation of innovation is confined by a lack of methodology of inventive projects. We will be establishing the foundations of a formal ontology for inventive design projects and finally some recommendations for engineering education.